25 Random Things About Me

Pardon the pink font color, I just can't help it.  Hehehe.

1.  I have two names- Sharon Beaulah.  I rarely use my second name - the exceptions being official documents, exam papers, and my Yahoo  - because it always gets misspelled or mispronounced, making me cringe every time either happens.  For everyday dealings, I use my first name and my surname, and I like it that way.
2. When I was about five years old, I was forced to attend a staff meeting in my dad's office because the big boss had closed the main door  and I was too scared to open it.  Since then, I've never liked meetings. 
3. My piano teacher sat beside me the first time I played in church because I was petrified with fear.   I played "Hear Those Lovely Bells".
4. The violin has never been my best friend.  I was specifically told by my violin teacher that my fingers were meant for the piano and the piano alone. I played the violin on only one occasion - my brother's graduation from grade school - and I had to be coaxed by my piano teacher. 
5. The saying "what you see is what you get" has never been  applicable to me.
6. I was mistaken for a foreigner by the graduate program coordinator of the Dept of Biochem in UP Manila.  I was asked to present my student visa during my interview at the grad school.  Hahahaha.
7. When I was doing my undergrad thesis, I cried my little heart out in the animal room because my once-flawless legs were riddled with bites from parasites that lived in my rats' fur.
8. I spend inadvertently long periods of time when shopping for things for my kikay kit because  I always check the ingredients of each item before buying it.  The effort paid off when, one day, I found out that a popular local brand of cosmetics listed polyacrylamide as one of the ingredients in their products. Polyacrylamide is one of the ingredients for making PAGE and SDS-PAGE gels (for protein separation).  I always wear double gloves when handling such gels for fear of getting Parkinson's later in life.  There's no way that reagent's getting within 10 meters of my face. 
9. I like matching sleepwear, for some weird reason.
10. I like matching sheets.  They look orderly and neat.  Hehe.
11. I've never had a crush on any of my profs from college to grad school.
12. I love everything pink.  If I could, then I would probably formulate an SDS-PAGE staining solution that would give pink-colored bands.
13. Having my nails done is something I do often because it makes me feel soothed and rejuvenated.
14. I splurged my first salary from my first job on a whole-body scrub.  It was worth the expense.
15. I can always be relied on to consume large amounts of sweets - particularly chocolates.
16. Since I'm never good with numbers, I've developed this compulsion to solve a single problem for at least 10  times.  The results have to be the same, or I'll start all over again.  I suppose I'll never grow out of that. :D
17. I gorge on food whenever I get upset.
18. I can't go to sleep without putting on my eye cream, a must-have for every woman above 25 (that's according to my best friend Vannie).
19. Shopping is one heartbreak therapy that works wonders for me. 
20. I heart gay lingo.
21. Spending an entire night in the lab is something I'm really looking forward to next semester.  It's not all work, you know.  I can always watch movies and eat while waiting for my sample run to be complete.
22. I've always been attracted to intelligent guys with a great sense of humor.  They're an endangered species.
23. When I obtained my first SDS-PAGE gel, I felt as if I were looking at an tiny work of art - one that I painted myself.   The bands were so beautiful that I thought I was looking at perfection itself.
24. Item # 23 may seem corny to some people but it's quite an achievement for me, given that fact that I spent  long hours trying to find which protein isolation method worked best under the present lab conditions. 
25. I'm happily single and unattached.  I don't give myself a deadline on getting married (I know some people who do) because I believe that a woman can have roles in life other than those of being a wife and mother.  Satisfaction, contentment and happiness can also be achieved in other areas.  I would rather stay single for the rest of my life and discover something that would benefit future generations than the other way around.  Hehe. 

Short Break

I've been drawing compounds and complex compounds (cyclopentadienes connected to one zirconium atom) for the past 3 hours, and I feel like what little energy I have left is slowly being zapped away.  Add to that the ever-confusing reaction schemes and texts that are making my head spin.  Why, oh why, are some authors so sadistic?  Do they deliberately write one thing on the main article and another on the supplementary information just for the heck of it?  If there's one thing I learned from my new job, it is to aim to be as crystal-clear as possible when it'll be my turn to publish my research (that's around 20 years from now).  Not only will it enlighten the readers, but it'll also make things easier for excerptors. 

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Break's over.  Gotta get back to my compounds.  Grrr...

Of E and Z, R and S, Cis and Trans

I hated organic chemistry with a passion when I was in college.  I hated it when I was reviewing for the chem licensure exams seven years ago.  And I still hate it now, even if my job revolves around it. Surprisingly, though, I got the highest score in organic chemistry when the results of the licensure exams came out.  The greatest irony of all is that I'm a biochemistry major who loathes organic chemistry, which happens to be the foundation of my field of specialization.

Of all the possible topics of organic chem, I loathe isomers the most.  Perhaps it's because of the fact that my visualization skills are almost zero and I can't mentally twist a molecular structure to save my life.  I have to draw the structure on paper, or use some computer software to make my task easier and less traumatic. 

To my everlasting horror, my new job has compelled me to review and recall the basic concepts that I despised so much, particularly isomers.  I'm therefore currently befriending E, Z, R, S, cis and trans - terms used to differentiate compounds with the same molecular formula but with different arrangements.  And it turned out to be quite interesting, as I can now appreciate the gibberish and its purported significance.  Learning to distinguish one isomer from another is actually fun and I'm starting to enjoy drawing them using special software (of course) and naming them using the same software.

And so I'm learning and learning about things that I'm supposed to have down to an art by now.  Who knows, perhaps I'll love org chem enough to specialize in it for my PhD.  :))

Welcome To My World

It's been quite sometime since I'd blogged seriously.  Since then, my writing skills have disintegrated and I'm hoping that they'll be revived as I attempt to fill this blog with stories and entries about my crazy life in this part of the universe.